Salesforce will buy Tableau Software for $15.3bn to augment its analytics

The CRM company sees the purchase as a means to pursue data-powered digital transformation opportunities

Salesforce is set to buy data visualisation company Tableau Software for $15.3 billion (£12 billion), as the cloud-centric CRM company looks to boost its analytics capabilities.

The acquisition will be an all-stock deal for Salesforce and is set to be the company's largest to date. It also plays into Salesforce's healthy appetite for purchasing companies that can complement its main cloud services; the company has purchased 60 other firms in just 20 years.

While Salesforce already has its own data analytics service in the form of Salesforce Einstein, once the acquisition is complete Tableau's analytics software is set to augment and expand the CRM platform's scope for delivering analytics and data visualisation.

“Tableau helps people see and understand data, and Salesforce helps people engage and understand customers. It's truly the best of both worlds for our customers--bringing together two critical platforms that every customer needs to understand their world," said Marc Benioff, chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce. "I'm thrilled to welcome Adam [Selipsky, president and CEO of Tableau ] and his team to Salesforce."

Keith Block, co-CEO at Salesforce added: "Data is the foundation of every digital transformation, and the addition of Tableau will accelerate our ability to deliver customer success by enabling a truly unified and powerful view across all of a customer's data."

Selipsky said that by joining Salesforce, Tableau will be able to “help people everywhere see and understand data”.

How exactly Salesforce will work Tableau into augmenting analytics services remains to be seen, as Tableau will still operate independently of the Salesforce band and remain in its Seattle headquarters with Selipsky at its helm.

But it will mean Salesforce is set to gain access to Tableau's customer base, numbering some 86,000 organisations worldwide, which include Netflix, Schneider Electric, and Verizon.

The acquisition of Tableau is slated to be completed by the close of Salesforce's third fiscal quarter of its current financial year, which ends 31 October.